Traditionally, most commercially available inkjet printers employ a printhead that traverse back and forth across the width of the print media as it prints. Such a print head is supplied with ink for printing and typically has a finite life, after which replacement of the printhead is necessary. Replacement of the printhead may be necessary due to degradation of the printhead through usage and in some cases the printhead may require placement following depletion of the ink supply. Due to the size and configuration of the traversing printhead, removal and replacement of this element is relatively easy, and the printer unit is designed to enable easy access to this element. Whilst printer systems employing such traditional traversing printheads have proven capable of performing printing tasks to a sufficient quality, as the printhead must continually traverse the stationary print media, such systems are typically slow, particularly when used to perform print jobs of photo quality.
Recently, it has been possible to provide printheads that extend the entire width of the print media so that the printhead remains stationary as the print media progresses past. Such printheads are typically referred to as pagewidth printheads, and as the printhead does not move back and forth across the print media, much higher printing speeds are possible with this printhead than with traditionally traversing printheads. However as the printhead is the length of the print media, it must be supported within the structure of the printer unit and requires multiple electrical contacts to deliver power and data to drive the printhead, and as such removal and replacement of the printhead is not as easy as with traditional traversing printheads.
Accordingly, there is a need to provide a printer system that is capable of providing high quality print jobs at high speeds and which facilitates relatively easy replacement of the printhead when necessary. There is also a need to provide such a printer system that can be readily re-filled with printing fluid when desired via an easy to use fluid dispensing system, thereby overcoming the need to replace the components of the printer following depletion of the ink supply.